(...) Whatever is considered to have been changed, one thing that has
not changed at all is the rights of women. Muslim extremist do not recognise the
rights of women. In my office where I was working women came to the office with
fear. Their fear was not in their imaginations. People like Gulbudin Hekmatyar
are there to throw acid on the faces of those women who appear on the street
wearing modest chador but not burqa (veil). One of my female colleagues wanted
to go to another country for training provided by the UN. The day she went to
the passport office was one of her worst humiliating moments, this in the hand
of a fundamentalist mullah who was in charge of the passport processing. He
simply told the woman that she was a prostitute to be working in an office.
However, being a prostitute and begging on the streets is not a problem. The
extremists love to see poverty. They were the same people who sold the Afghan
women to Arab fundamentalists. People still talk about the shamef! ul act of
Taliban when they went and destroyed all Shomali, killed men and took all the
women, put them in buses and sent them to Pakistan where the Arabs on the other
side received them. Where was the Afghan nang (honour)? Where was their Islam
spirit at that time? It shows clearly that Islam has been misused by the Taliban
and by the Mujahideen. It is a self made Islam for protecting the interest of
uneducated and backward extremist. It is not the real Islam.

(...)The turbans have
changed to pakols, but the heads are covered with the same mentality. The
headgear is there not to allow the old fundamentalism to evaporate. My country's
fall has not slowed or changed but only the appearance. The beards are trimmer,
but the smell of fanaticism coming from unwanted hair is very strong indeed.

(New York, December 17, 2002) –
Afghan women and girls have suffered mounting abuses, harassment and
restrictions of their fundamental human rights during 2002, Human Rights Watch
said in a new report released today.

The 52-page report, “We Want to Live
As Humans”: Repression of Women and Girls in Western Afghanistan, focuses
on the increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls imposed by Ismail
Khan, a local governor in the west of Afghanistan who receives military and
financial assistance from the United States. Human Rights Watch said that the
situation in Herat was symptomatic of developments across the country, and that
women and girls were facing new restrictions in several other regions as
well.

“Many people outside the country believe that Afghan women and
girls have had their rights restored. It’s just not true,” said Zama
Coursen-Neff, the co-author of the report and researcher in the Children’s
Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “Women and girls are still being abused,
harassed, and threatened all over Afghanistan, often by government troops and
officials.”

Human Rights Watch found that women’s and girls’ rights in
Herat had improved since the fall of the Taliban, noting that many women and
girls have been allowed to return to school and university, and to some jobs.
But the report found that these advances were tempered by growing government
repression of social and political life. Ismail Khan has censored women’s
groups, intimidated outspoken women leaders, and sidelined women from his
administration in Herat. Restrictions on the right to work mean that many women
will never be able to use their education.

The Human Rights Watch report
said that the Herat government has even recruited schoolboys to spy on girls and
women and report on so-called un-Islamic behavior.

In some instances,
police under Ismail Khan’s command have questioned women and girls seen alone
with men, even taxi drivers, and arrested those who are not related. Human
Rights Watch said that men caught in such circumstances are usually taken to
jail; women are brought to a hospital, where police force doctors to conduct
medical exams on the women to determine whether they have had recent sexual
intercourse, or if unmarried, whether they are virgins.

“Ismail Khan has
created an atmosphere in which government officials and private individuals
believe they have the right to police every aspect of women’s and girls’
lives: how they dress, how they get around town, what they say,” said
Coursen-Neff. “Women and girls in Herat expected and deserved more when
the Taliban were overthrown.”

Human Rights Watch said that problems for
women and girls were growing worse in many parts of the country outside of the
capital, Kabul.Throughout 2002, girls’ schools in at least five different
provinces have been set on fire or destroyed by rocket attacks.

Human
Rights Watch said that reports from around the country indicate that government
troops and officials regularly target women and girls for abuse, often invoking
vague edicts on dress and social behavior. In many areas, local police and
troops are enforcing Taliban-era restrictions, including banning music and
forcing women and adolescent girls to continue wearing burqas.

Human
Rights Watch said that many of these local forces have received weapons and
assistance from the United States and other countries during2002. Human
Rights Watch called on all countries involved in Afghanistan to cease military
assistance to local commanders and to coordinate all future aid through Kabul’s
central government.

Human Rights Watch urged the Afghan Transitional
Administration in Kabul to prohibit harassment and abuse targeted at women, and
to appoint new civilian governors in provinces in which serious abuses against
women and girls are occurring. Human Rights Watch also called on the
international community to support the Afghan government in these efforts. It
urged international donors to support the work of Afghanwomen, inside and
outside of the government, for example, by supporting women’s groups throughout
the country.

Human Rights Watch called on the U.N. Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan (UNAMA) to expand human rights monitoring efforts and to continue
efforts to strengthen the Afghan Human Rights Commission, in order to help
protect all Afghans seeking to speak openly and challenge abusers.

Noting
that efforts to improve security and human rights protection would require an
increased presence of international peacekeepers, Human Rights Watch urged the
United States, Germany, and the Netherlands to lead efforts to expand
international peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan, which are currently stationed
only in the Kabul area. Germany and the Netherlands will take joint command of
the peacekeeping forces in early 2003. Human Rights Watch urged the United
States, European Union nations, and NATO, as well as Pakistan, Iran, and other
countries bordering Afghanistan to contribute logistical and intelligence
support necessary for international peacekeeping to expand.

“The U.S.-led
coalition justified the war against the Taliban in part by promising that it
would liberate Afghanistan’s women and girls,” said Coursen-Neff. “In fact, by
supporting repressive warlords, the international community has broken that
promise and forsaken women’s rights.”

The Human Rights Watch report is
the second of two reports on Herat. In November, Human Rights Watch released a
51-page report, “All Our Hopes Are Crushed: Violence and Repression in Western
Afghanistan,” documenting abuses by Ismail Khan’s forces against political
opponents,detainees and ethnic minorities.

The
International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat is a response by national and
international women's groups to the horrific violence unleashed against the
Muslim community of Gujarat since February 27, 2002, in which women were a
central target.

As part of this initiative, members of women's groups
from India accompanied nine women from Sri Lanka, Algeria/France, India,
Israel/UK, Germany and the USA who visited areas in and around Ahmedabad,
Vadodara and Panchmahals between 14 and 17 December 2002. During these visits,
we met with survivors of the violence as well as with members of women's groups,
human rights groups, and other citizens' groups from Gujarat.

In
solidarity,

Women Living Under Muslim Laws international solidarity
network

----------------------

December 2002

International
Initiative for Justice in Gujarat

As women’s groups in India, we are
horrified by the violence that was unleashed against Muslim communities and in
particular on Muslim women in Gujarat from February 27, 2002, onward. We are
appalled at the ways in which the instruments of a democratic state are working
against the interests of its own citizens, and the ways in which women’s bodies
are being used as battlegrounds in the struggle over defining India as a Hindu
State.

For nine months, we have seen lack of national political will to
apply existing laws and redressal mechanisms to ensure justice for the victims.
This is further compounded by the fact of continuing violence in the state. An
International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat (IIJ) was
therefore constituted, comprising jurists, activists, lawyers, writers and
academics from various parts of the world. Keeping in mind the many reports of
independent agencies and statutory bodies, the Panel, which visited Gujarat
between 14th and 17th December, investigated the violence – particularly the
physical and sexual – inflicted upon women since 27th February 2002 specifically
in light of existing international laws, conventions and norms. The Panel has
also addressed the complicity of the State in the violence, the lack of
effective redressal for the victims and the implications of the recent BJP
victory in the state. This panel was not simply a ‘fact-finding’ mission, but
rather to support efforts toward achieving justice for the survivors of these
attacks, as well as to support the prevention of future attacks against
minorities, particularly women.

(...) The complete report and urgent actions to be taken can be accessed at the
Online Volunteers website -http://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/reports/iijg/

Since
December 1987, the Palestinian people have been struggling for an independent
state, free of settlements. They will fight for this right to their last
drop of blood...or ours.

Occupation has exacted a heavy toll in
racism: threats of transfer, a separation fence, creation of Palestinian
ghettos, and trampling of the human and civil rights of Palestinians both inside
and outside Israel.

All these undermine the legitimacy of the state of
Israel and sustain a never-ending cycle of bloodshed that must be
stopped!

Occupation - Racism - Transfer - Death!

We - women who
struggle daily against discrimination and violence against women - reject all
forms of racism and oppression against thePalestinians in the occupied
territories and those who are citizens of Israel.

We
are: * For living in mutual respect and peace between our
nations. * Against racism and violence in our lives. * For
evacuating the settlements and returning to peace negotiations with the
Palestinian leadership. * Against occupation and the bloodshed on both
sides.

Imagine you are a woman in a remote corner of Kurdistan,
where seldom if ever a doctor loses its way. Anyhow you would not have the
financial opportunities to pay a medical treatment. And all of a sudden they
come with three ambulances, telling you something about indispensable health
measures in a language you do not have a command of. You are taken to a hospital
in the next city, where actions are carried out on you, which you cannot
understand and you feel ashamed to talk about. And after months you come to find
that you can 't have children anymore...

At least 17 women from the
village Özekli, 60 kilometres from Diyarbakir in Kurdistan-Turkey, have had to
suffer this treatment, says the president of the women's commission of the
Bar Association of Diyarbakir, Meral Danis, who publicized this case during a
symposium on "Violence against women and medicine". According to Danis, several
victims turned to different civil social institutions with the request for help.
Investigations have shown that a medical team set up by the governor of
Diyarbakir went from house to house and took the women to hospital. The victims
did not even know why they were operated.

Danis told that similar cases
became public in Mardin, Adiyaman, Adana and Van. The affected women have either
been sterilized without their knowledge or pressured into allowing the operation
to be carried out by different methods.

Sterilisation measures against
Kurdish Women were already carried out in the middle 90's, as the Turkish
Security Council stated that the population growth of the Kurdish part of the
population would present a danger for Turkey.

Consequently, a packet of
measures for population control was decided upon to counteract this
development. At that time, not only contraception was enforced by hormonal
injections, but also infertility was affected by giving an overdose of these
hormones. Ever since, several cases have become known time and again. Such
measures amount to fascistic methods of population control vis a vis the Kurdish
part of the population of Turkey, breaches of human rights and medical ethics as
well as a form of torture directed against the physical and psychological
integrity of Kurdish women.As the Kurdish Women Peace Office we condemn
these fascistic attacks on the rights of women.

Diyarbakir-based NGOs
such as the Women's Centre Selis, the Human Rights Association IHD, the
Chamber of Physicians and the Bar Association are conducting further
investigations about this special kind of human rights violations.
We need your help in order to support their work and put an immediate end
to these measures.

Please ask the new Prime Minister of Turkey, Mr
Abdullah Gül, and the Minister of the Interior, Mr Abdülkadir Aksu, to interfere
immediately.

Women
in Saudi Arabia face extreme forms of discrimination and restriction on their
basic human rights. Discrimination touches virtually all aspects of their lives
including family life, decision making, employment, education and the justice
system.

The lives of women in Saudi Arabia are regulated
by a web of mores, Islamic rules and fatwa. It is the will of the state that
controls almost every aspect of women's daily life, from their right of movement
to the right to redress. Women can not walk alone even in their own
neighbourhood without the fear of being stopped, beaten or detained particularly
by the religious police as suspected moral offenders. They are not allowed to go
anywhere, or leave the country without a male guardian (mahram) or his written
consent.

Women in Saudi Arabia, like men, face torture,
corporal judicial punishment such as flogging and execution after summary trials,
which do not meet the basic standards of fair trial. However, it is harsher
for women due to the discrimination, which they are subjected to in society.
When they come into contact with the criminal justice system, women are invariably
interrogated by men. Having no previous contact with unrelated men, they are
consequently vulnerable to being intimidated into giving confessions, which
are used as a sole evidence for conviction and punishment.

Discrimination in law against women is not only limited to laws regulating the
system of government and decision-making. For example, the Labour Code in Saudi
Arabia contains direct and indirect discriminatory clauses against women. They
must be represented by a male relative or an attorney. Gender segregation often
means that women are limited to unequal facilities and opportunities.

On
the occasion of human rights day, a rally was organized by Pakistan Labour
Federation (PLF) on st1:date Year="2002" Day="10"
Month="12">10th December
2002. o:p>

While
addressing the rally Haji Muhammad Saeed
Founder/ Secretary General of PLF said that every year on 10th
December, the whole World celebrate Human Rights day. This Day marks the
significance of human Respect and dignity as the whole World Commemorates the
adoption of the universal Declaration of human Rights by the united Nation in
1948.He said that Government should provide freedom to the Workers to order
their lives in accordance with their own basic needs. He said that the best way
to celebrate Human Rights Day is to eliminate injustice and poverty from the
Society.

Mr. Waheed
Ahmad Advocate Legal secretary demand to launch a country wide programmer for
workers awareness and Education in Human Rights from the primary level in all
Educational institutions. This program will be develop an efficient mechanism
for the promotion and protection of Human Rights. He appreciated the Government
for providing reposition in National Assembly for Women. He also affected the
New Law for the elimination of Child Labour. He told the participants of Rally
about the newly promulgated Juvenile Justice System ordinance 2000, It has
extended many concessions to the Child which include prisoners line on the death
penalty and whipping for Children under 18 year of age. He said that Pakistan
Labour Federation (PLF) is working for the promotion and protection of Human
Rights and Pakistan Labour Federation (PLF) has established a center for Human
Rights. He said that we should create a society fee from Human suffering and
deprivations. He said that importance to promotion of Human Rights is indicated
by the policy frame work on Human Rights which envisages elimination of
injustice and poverty, safeguarding human dignity establishes the rule of Law
providing freedom of Association/ Trade unions to the
Workers.

Muhammad
Youaf Malik Chief Organizer said that this day is reminder to workers of human
dignity equality and security How ever fifty-four years after the adoption the
declaration seems to have become a political tool in the hands of Global power
wielders to strengthen their control over the world policy and decision making
processes.

Miss
Rizwana Yasmin Advocate demanded that full and equal
opportunities for education for all should be provided. She said that for
improving the quality of education through co-operative partnerships with Trade
Union will be helpful for the elimination of Child Labour. She said that Women
Employees Welfare Association (WEWA) working with the collaboration of Pakistan Labour Federation (PLF)/ World
Asian Worker Organisation(WAWO) to improve the condition of women and provided
education and training facilities to promote Women Rights. She also demanded
that the government immediately implement the recommendations and convention
regarding Human Rights through their ratification of Human Rights
declaration.

Speakers are
among well known women's rights activists, writers, campaigners, lawyers,
politicians, journalists and Swedish government authorities, and asylum right
activists. Speakers are invited from the Middle East, Sweden and other European
countries. (...)

Through this letter, I would like to
inform you that AnA, the Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses is currently
developing the Gender and the International Criminal Court Project, financed by
the Network of East-West Women, USA. At this point, we are conducting a raising
awareness campaign related to the International Criminal Court and its relevancy
for the feminist movement. The target group is composed mainly of women’s NGOs
in CEE.

As a first result of the project, we are happy to inform
you that in the end of January, we will be able to send you the “Gender and the
International Criminal Court” brochure, which I hope you will find
useful. The brochure will be available in English and Romanian, both
electronically and in hard copy.

If you are interested in receiving a
copy, we would be more than happy to send you one. Please forward us your
request, containing:

a. Your name and exact address or
the name and exact address of your organization;b. Your
email address or the email address of your organization;c.
Information concerning your preference for the language (English or Romanian) or
the format (electronic or hard copy) of the brochure.

You can send all
information to:liviaa@home.ro

Also, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for
the help and cooperation of the Network of East-West Women, USA and the Women’s
Caucus for Gender Justice, USA in the development of the project. I take
this opportunity, as well to extend my best wishes to all of you for 2003. I
hope all your dreams and hopes will come true in the New Year!!!Thank you
and, again, I hope you will have the best year ever!Yours truly,

The Commission will focus on two thematic issues: participation
and access of women to the media, and information and communication technologies
and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment
of women; and women's human rights and elimination of all forms of violence
against women and girls as defined in the Beijing Platform of Action and the
outcome document of the Special Session for the General Assembly entitled
"Women: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first
century."

The Expert Group meetings for two thematic issues have been
held.

The meeting on women's human rights and elimination of all forms of
violence against women and girls addressed on "Trafficking in women and girls".
This meeting was also to prepare for the twelfth session of the Commission on
Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in May 2003, which will address, among
other issues, trafficking in persons, particularly women and children. For more
information visit: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/trafficking2002/index.html

There
were two additional expert group meetings (1)" Participation and access of women
to the media and its impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and
empowerment of women" http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/media2002/index.html
and (2) "Participation and access of women to the media, and information and
communication technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the
advancement and empowerment of women.

At a time when we are confronted to a
frantic competition to give birth to the first cloned baby, Sisyphe publishes a
new file on the merchandisation of the living and its uncontrollable
consequences for humanity.

December has proved to be a month full of groundbreaking women. Take a
look at San Diego, USA, where the first lesbian district attorney was recently
elected, (Current Events/North America) and in Afghanistan, the several women
training to become broadcast journalists are taking their careers and lives into
their own hands (Current Events/Middle East). Indigenous women in Latin American
will convene to discuss issues that directly concern their lives-poverty,
education, and discrimination among other topics- in a summit organized in
Mexico (Current Events/Latin America). At the same time, mobilization among
women is being encouraged to gather in Washington DC for the 30 anniversary of
the Roe vs. Wade, the decision making legal, safe abortions available for women
(Actions). Europe is debating the issue of prostitution with demonstrations in
Paris (Current Events/Europe), and a recent study showing that many Eastern
European traffickers of women, are being systematically set free (Current
Events/Europe). A recent report has also been released regarding the more and
more common practice of trafficking in Israel (Current Events/Near East). In
Pakistan and Morocco, women fear for their safety with attacks by
fundamentalists on uncovered women (Current Events/Africa), and an escalation of
ìhonor killings (Current Events/Asia). In the Feminization of Migration
(Resources), we are presented with the changing face of migration, that of
women.

Dear Women,We would like to respond to this call
from Starhawk to organize a women's anti-war action for the
weekend of Jan 17-19, preferably January 17 in solidarity with our US and
international sisters. We think it is time that we send out the strong message
that women are a powerful force that are resisting this proposed war and that
this force will have to be reckoned with.

* The appeal of this action is
that it ties in war, poverty and racism - War
is a womens' issue, racism is a women's issue, poverty is a women's
issue.

* The second is that it can
support us developing a broad network of women's affinity groups for future
non-violent direct actions.

We would like to propose a loose structure where women form affinity
groups (small groups that provide support and which can decide their own action
or style of action), send a rep from their group to a "spokescouncil", which
will make the major decisions around the action. IF you have no affinity group
come as an individual, and we also support formation of new affinity groups.
(...)